Scams are on the rise. There are many cons out there looking to rob you of what you value. Your money, your identity, even your brand is potentially at risk. Trademark fraud has been a thing since trademarking, however, following along like a shadow. Bloomberg reports that as surge of new applicants have filed with the USPTO, a flood of miscreants have overwhelmed the office's capacity to deal with duplicity.
One common scam is in the form of impersonation. The defrauder will pretend to be an agent of the USPTO, in which they will send a message to an applicant about their registration. All application information is public so anyone can see it. They will warn that their trademark needs to be renewed and will ask for payment to keep it active. Sometimes they pretend to be lawyers and threaten action. Many foreign firms have also tried to file thousands of fraudulent application with stolen or fake attorney credentials.Viktors Suhorukovs was a scammer who was responsible for the loss of a collective $4 million from applicants. All of this to say is that the USPTO has had to get serious about this issue.
This has led to the office to bolster their methods. They now use electronic mapping to validate addresses. In addition, the registration office had exponentially increased the number of trademark sanctions, from 35 in 2022 to 115 in 2023. However, this has only curtailed the number of scams, not gotten rid of them. In truth, the best way to protect yourself is by being diligent and informed.
There many ways to tell if your are being taken advantage of:
- Actual USPTO agents will never ask for payment over the phone or email
- The most common spoofed phone numbers are 571-272-1000 and 800-786-9199, both of which are associated with the USPTO headquarters
- An official government page will always end in .gov
- “Patent and Trademark Office,” Patent and Trademark Bureau,” “Trademark Compliance Center,” and “Trademark Compliance Office” are not part of the USPTO
- Demands of immediate payment at risk of loosing trademark rights are a tell-tale sign of a scam
If your do receive a message or a call like this, and you are still not sure whether it is legitimate. We suggest either checking your USPTO account and seeing the status of your trademark, and/or calling the office directly to verify your concerns. In addition, make sure you are always informed on what new tricks people are using to exploit you. The world is always changing so we must always work to keep up.
Works Cited
https://www.drm.com/resources/trademark-scams-on-the-rise/
https://news.bloomberglaw.com/ip-law/surge-in-trademark-fraud-scams-overwhelms-regulators-applicants
